


what I waited for and could not find

by ekourege



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Because... it doesnt really make sense, Bullying, Gen, I reject the Tsuna Thinks His Dad Is Dead thing, I wish the timeline for this show was more clearly defined, Self-Esteem Issues, Tsuna kinda wishes his dad was around, Tsuna tries to make friends and it Does Not Go Well, Unrequited Crush, also uh, character study i guess?, kinda angsty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 16:30:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ekourege/pseuds/ekourege
Summary: Tsuna grows up with a nickname, one tailored specifically for him.“Dame-Tsuna”.





	what I waited for and could not find

“No good.”

It’s all he’ll ever be, all that he _is_. The knowledge sits heavy in his heart, reaffirming itself every time he dashes to school, tripping and fumbling. The name, the identity that comes with it, is driven home again and again each and every time he’s cornered by other students, all of which have sneers on their lips and glints in their eyes as they chant “Dame-Tsuna” like broken records, like they believe that as long as they repeat the word it will justify every bruise and scrape Tsuna receives.

Some days, he makes it to class on time. Stumbling in with his uniform in disarray and the cuffs of his shirt dirtied. Other days, he is not so lucky. He's a second too late in picking himself up off the ground, ran a little too far away from his route to school in an effort to escape a group of upperclassmen and arrived at the gates only minutes after the bell.

As soon as Tsuna hears that chime ring out across the courtyard, he can already hear a vengeful Hibari’s tagline as he descends on him, tonfas out and scowl carved on his lips.

He usually doesn't make it to class that day.

On the days he does make it to class - ignoring the snickers as he trips over his own two feet. Bruising sharp elbows and knees on chair legs, desks, and even other students - the teachers pass back graded assignments, looking down on him with poorly concealed contempt as they slap the papers on his desk. The numbers read _17_ , _5_ , _24_ , and a _0_ in bold red ink, the meaning, the litany of _failure_ reaching a crescendo and clawing at the back of his eyeballs, filling his eardrums with static.

He pretends that what he's hearing isn't the mocking voice of his teacher or the roaring laughter of his peers.

The weight of that word, of being “Dame-Tsuna” then bears down on him with vengeance, stealing the air from his lungs and strangling him.

-

The final nail in the coffin is when Tsuna peers into his mother's eyes just after she finds a failed test, haphazardly stowed away under his bed and away from his sight.

Tsuna only looks down at his feet, gritting his teeth when he sees the light in her eyes dim in disappointment.

His eye catches on the calendar hung on his wall. He realises he hasn't seen his dad since he was five. 

Five. That's when his clumsiness worsened, his shyness becoming something to be mocked rather than cooed over, his lack of smarts becoming apparent.

The knot in his chest tightens, compressing and forming a tiny vortex in his chest.

* * *

Tsuna is seven years old and very alone.

The feeling it leaves make his stomach hurt, as if it's been days since his last meal and his stomach is trying to rip itself apart in desperation. Tsuna hadn’t even really realised what it meant to be alone before then, but now that he has, he wishes he could go back to when he didn't understand. 

Tripping was no longer just a mildly embarrassing occasion, saying the wrong answer in the class that’s advancing in leaps and bounds - while he’s slowing down - is precarious and gut-wrenching. The adults had told him with placating smiles and furrowed brows that in time, he too he would gain friends. And therein lies the issue: Tsuna hasn’t gained any friends. He still plays by himself, still sits alone at school, it’s still as it was one - or even _two!_ \- years ago where no one really wants to talk to him. 

Tsuna hates to be in pain, and this feeling is one of the most intense feelings of not-pain he’s ever felt, and it won’t _go away_.

Tsuna figures, after being left alone during recess again, that he has got to make a friend. Just one will do, Tsuna’s not greedy, won't demand that everyone be friends with him or that people like him, because he knows that they don't, and Tsuna would rather have one friend who actually likes him over having many who hate him.

So, Tsuna tries. He makes a desperate gambit to fit in.

…and it goes poorly. 

Tsuna tried to mimic how the other kids walk, replicate how the others talked with such confidence and vigour but his voice dies in his throat and only makes the other kids look at him weird and turn away, going back to ignoring him. The seven year old then attempts basketball and soccer, his legs getting tangled together and causing him to eat dirt time and time again. 

The worst moment is when Tsuna played hide and seek. Tsuna giggled madly as he hides in some bushes, ignoring how the foliage scrapes and pokes at his skin and frays his clothing.

He waits. His giggles peter out. Tsuna crawls out of his hiding place, revealing himself, and he expects the kid who was “seeker” to jump out of nowhere and tag him, proclaiming him “caught”. Yet, there is nothing.

Tsuna looks back towards the playground. 

It's empty.  


* * *

He tried again, a small flicker of determination licking at his insides and giving him the push needs to get up and try once more, this time to approach a small group of four. The boys, Tsuna notices, were playing with action figures and cars instead soccer balls and baseball bats. 

Timidly, Tsuna shuffles his way over to the group, his pudgy fingers wound together in an anxious knot. Twitching nervously and fidgeting when they peered up at him, he resolutely avoided looking into their eyes.

Tsuna, in a quiet, stuttering voice, asked what they were playing, and if it was possible, if he could join in too.

Tsuna may not have seen the look in their eyes when he asked, but he definitely felt the toy car that hit him straight in the chest. The boy stumbled back slightly, eyes widening, their voices tinged with disgust and the acrid taste of derision as they forcefully rebuffed him.

Tsuna’s breath hitched, and when he retreats to a partially covered place under the slide, he spends the rest of his time trying to hide his tears.  
-  
At seven and half, fragile but optimistic, Tsuna tried his luck at befriending the girls.

He doesn't even get a chance.

Tsuna isn't sure whether or not it's because of his reputation or the fact he's a boy, but they resolutely stand against him, sneering at him and turning back to whatever it was they were doing a moment before.

Tsuna finds the words they throw at him hit him harder than the ones the boys did.

* * *

Tsuna cried a lot, in those days.

They made fun of him for that, too.

* * *

In a last ditch effort, Tsuna clings to the thought that maybe the kids will start liking him if he does better in school, that if he can answer a few questions in class and get at least one _A_ then his status as a “No-Good” will disappear.

He starts by trying to pay attention in class again. It's always been difficult, his eyes wandered aimlessly and never staying focused on the teacher for more than 30 seconds. His ears tune the teacher out the moment the bell rings and class begins, the dullness of what's being taught leeching all the energy Tsuna has. 

He often wonders if it's a written rule that school is to be this dull and sleep-inducing.

Needless to say, his plan of good grades doesn't work. In fact, it doesn't even get off the ground. It just blows up after he turns on the switch, leaving him coughing up smoke with teary eyes. And I'm the end, Tsuna absorbs nothing from the various activities he partakes in, his grades stay the same as they always have: far below average.

Tsuna ends up spending most of class thinking about paying attention, but never actually doing so. His brain feels muddled, like instead of flesh it was made of fluff and cotton, and even though he tried his best to understand the information being fed to him, it all went in one ear and out the other, usually leaving him with nothing but a headache. 

It's during this time that his meagre motivation to succeed dwindles down to nearly nothing, and doing good in school becomes a far off concept that Tsuna doesn't think he can ever catch up to. (what's even the _point_?)

Tsuna is seven when he gives up on making friends, feeling that it was nothing more than wishful thinking. 

Tsuna stumbles in the door of his house, throwing his bag to the ground and clumsily slipping off his shoes.

As he trudged up the steps, a new issue of manga in his hand, he sighs in resignation and grouses, _'Losers don't have friends, it seems.’_

* * *

Tsuna is ten-years-old and walking across a bridge on his way home from school. He's lamenting the state of his uniform, which is ripped and faded at the knees after he'd tripped a few blocks back, scraping his hands and knees on the sidewalk.

Tsuna, so wrapped up in his worried musing, (Hibari-san would _kill him-_ ) didn't notice that a few upperclassmen had spotted him and were now approaching him with loping strides, curled grins, and a delighted look in their eyes.

He's broken from his stupor when one of them lurches forward, snatching the bag loosely thrown over his shoulder from him. Tsuna reaches his arms out towards the thief in a feeble attempt to retrieve his property, a pitiful noise of misery escaping him.

The kid just laughs, holding it far above his head, out of Tsuna’s reach, no matter how hard he may try to retrieve it.

They surround him, glee etched onto their faces as they send his bag sailing over the railing and into the stream below. The group laughs at the distraught apparent on his pale face, one of them shrugging flippantly and sighing out, “What's Dame-Tsuna going to do with a bookbag anyway?" They turn away from him, resuming their walk, as if Tsuna hadn't been there at all. 

Tsuna stares at their receding figures with shadowed eyes, feet glued to his place on the bridge.

He looks down at his feet, catches a glimpse of his tattered pants, and his face goes pale.

_‘I'm so screwed!’_ Tsuna whines despairingly, jerking forward and leaning over the railing, roving his eyes across the water below in an effort to locate his bag. He finds it, of course, ruined and quickly being swept away by the stream, far out of his reach.

Tsuna can't swim, and he knows that he is too slow and clumsy to catch up to it from land.

In the end, he shuffles home without even attempting to retrieve his things. His mother scolds him lightly for “losing something so important!” but quickly shifts her mood, patting him on the head with a smile and promising to make him his favorite dish for dinner that night.

Tsuna doesn't even try to correct her, instead he just grumbles and apologises, making a flimsy promise that it won't happen again.  
-  
He lies in bed that night, pondering his mother's startlingly good mood. How despite his bag being gone, full of his pens and papers and notebooks, she didn't really seem to be the least bit disappointed in him today. Mostly projecting a fond exasperation. She didn't get the look in her eyes that told him she was slowly giving up on him, too.

It's then that he realises that it's because he didn't have any failed grades to show her, another _0_ shove in her face as he scuffed his bare feet against the floor, looking anywhere but at her face.

Tsuna is ten when he stops showing his mother the grades he gets.

* * *

About a week later, with a shiny new bag and several humiliating scoldings from his teachers fresh on his mind, he arrives at the gates of his school, only to see a figure that only appears to exact some vague form of revenge on his person.

Hibari Kyouya, the head of disciplinary committee, stands there, glaring at the students who frantically scitter into the school so as not to incur his wrath.

In one of his hands is Tsuna’s sodding wet bag, muddy and congealed. 

The other holds a tonfa.

* * *

Tsuna limps home, multitudes of bruises tugging at his screaming muscles. 

His mother just titters at him, clucking her tongue at the injuries as she patches them up.

* * *

Tsuna is twelve and _graduating_. His mom shows up to the graduation ceremony, sitting in the audience with a bright smile on her face, eyes sparkling. His dad… doesn't. Instead, the man just laugh sheepishly over the phone, citing claims of being busy with work. His light hearted tone makes Tsuna's ears ring. Tsuna isnt sure why his dad doesn't come out and say it, why he had the gall to lie to him, to act as if he doesn't think of Tsuna as a failure. 

Tsuna is twelve and sitting on the edge of his bed, torso curled over his hands as he looks emptily at them. It's dark out, long after his mother has gone to bed, but Tsuna can't find it in himself to sleep.

He peers down at his fingers. They're littered with scars, ranging from small and silky to ugly knots of improperly healed flesh. The scars come from both his tormentors and his own inability to pilot his body properly. His hands quiver, causing them to blur under his unfocused vision, like a photo taken a moment too late, the subject moving a moment too soon and smearing the image.

Who was Tsuna again? Who was he again?

He's been Dame-Tsuna for so long he's not sure he's ever been anything else. Just Dame-Tsuna. Dame. No good. Clumsy and stupid and friendless.

_Worthless._

Tsuna doesn't sink into unconsciousness until three in the morning.  
-  
There are damp patches on his pillow when he wakes up.

Tsuna wants so badly to go back to a time when he didn't mentally refer to himself as Dame-Tsuna. He wants to go back to a time where could cry about not having friends and the pain of injuries he received, whether it be from a tormentor or his own clumsiness. However, all he can feel past the ache in his chest is vague disappointment and resignation. His life has become dull in his bitter acceptance of his lack of worth. He's Dame-Tsuna: Slow and lacking balance on a good day. He's not good at anything, not academics, not sports, and especially not talking to people.

Except when he's being used as someone's punching bag, of course. He's quite good at that.

* * *

Tsuna can admit to himself that he really likes Sasagawa Kyoko. Tsuna likes that she's kind, he likes her smile and the way she laughs at something her best friend - Hana - says. She's popular and pretty, and the school's idol, so it makes sense that Tsuna, below the food chain itself, would have a crush on her.

That doesn't mean it doesn't hurt, though. He knows his chance at ever grabbing her attention sits at zero, that she's so far out of his league it seems as if she exists on an entirely different world than he does.

Tsuna knows that she probably isn't even aware he exists, and that due to his extremely poor reputation she probably won't ever speak to him, and his pining is pointless, but he does it anyway.

Tsuna decides to ignore it, to push forward with his crush, hoping that the quick glances he steals from under his hair will suffice, pushing back the stinging sensation pricking his already festering heart.  
-  
At home, Tsuna buries himself in snacks and manga and tries to forget himself. Hibari-san beats him up for being _“too pathetic in his presence”_ while he's at school. Tsuna is just glad he's quick about it, confidently ramming a metal tonfa into the side of his face with a _“crack!”_ , before kicking him in the gut, causing Tsuna to drop heavily to the ground, gasping and curled in on himself.

The prefect doesn't even stay to survey the damage he caused, only eyeing him disdainfully for a moment before turning away with a satisfied huff, as if he's finally squashed the bug that'd been buzzing around his head.

Heaving and in pain, he decides to just… not get up for a while. Tsuna is content to lay curled on the pavement, gritting his teeth against the pain in both his face and gut. Small bits of dust and rock bite into his skin, but Tsuna couldn't be bothered to care.

Tsuna aches, and despite being hit in only two places, the hurt has sunk into his bones, getting into his veins and spreading throughout his body, while his knees and arms throb painfully from where they scraped the ground.  
-  
It's only when he hears the distant chatter of other people that Tsuna peels himself from the sidewalk. His bones groan in protest as he rights himself and attempts to pick up his bag from where it had skidded across the pavement. Then, Tsuna brushes the pebbles clinging to his skin off, first to his arms, then to his hands, wiping them on his pants.

Tsuna drags himself home on legs that threaten to give out. He isn't really sure why he still goes to school (other than Kyoko, and even that isn't enough to make up for the new bits of hell that sprout up like weeds every time he walks through those gates), why he dreads every failed grade when he knows that he's stupid and that he can't improve - it's just not possible for people like him - and why he still gets up every morning and tries to get to school on time.

He's passed his breaking point long ago, he knows he's no good now, has known that for years, and yet he still takes the same routes his bullies know he takes, wakes up late and trips on that _one damn stair_ and fails most of his assignments. 

Tsuna isn't sure why he gets up and goes on.

Then, out of the blue, a baby wearing a fedora shows up at his door, and everything changes faster than he can comprehend. The child is strange, wearing a tailored suit and talking in an oddly refined way despite his accent. He's clearly a foreigner, and Tsuna has to laugh because nothing about what he's looking at makes any _sense_.

Tsuna isn't laughing when a gun is pointed at his face.

He learns he's to become a criminal, to be the one to lead other criminals based on blood rights. Blood rights he gained from his father. 

A world opens up to Tsuna that he's not sure he wants to know about, of flames and guardians, and what being a don actually means.

He receives more injuries than before. Yet, he somehow ends up with more friends, too. (And seeing as he had none before, Tsuna privately counts that as an improvement, even if he's not exactly sure they _see him,_ Sawada Tsunayoshi, and not a boss, a savior - the list of titles that are attributed to him but are never correct).

His flames - Sky, he learns - are a new source of comfort for him. It's like being reunited with an old friend after being apart for too long, and something in him seems to unfurl from it'd been cowering before, leaving him with a new - old? - sense of harmony.

As nice as the feeling may be, Tsuna isn't sure the public humiliation he suffers time and time again makes up for it.

* * *

Yet, somehow, the emptiness that's been eating at him for years doesn't go away, even with his flames being unsealed. Even with friends, improved grades (still failing, but not for long, going by Reborns methods and the scars Tsuna has to show for it.), and a - mostly - regained sense of balance, something deep in his chest is still gaping and raw. It makes Tsuna restless, unsatisfied with the ways things are, despite the fact he has everything he's ever dared to dream of now - despite the strings attached.

Tsuna ignores it as he always does, so as not to inflate his ego. (It’s already getting too big for someone of his caliber, anyway. He's Dame-Tsuna, he knows, but it's nice to pretend, at least for a while.)

(Dame-) Tsuna goes on. If only for his friends, this time.

* * *

It stops being a game, eventually, as the stakes he's confronted with keep escalating, the risks getting higher and more severe and the discontentment with everything he now has spreads like an infectious disease.

Tsuna… really just wants to spend a day off with his friends. (But even then, he's not sure. Not sure about Hibari-san, who reminds him of pain and sharp metal and _pathetic-_ , not sure about Mukuro, who has his own agenda and doesn't really care about Tsuna at all. Tsuna isn't sure about Chrome, who follows Mukuro so avidly, and is deeply anxious about who’s really here for him, and not just for a fight or because Tsuna's apart of the mafia now-)

But he can't be, because Tsuna has responsibilities he can't ignore now, of famiglia and Guardians and friends.

So, Tsuna goes on.

**Author's Note:**

> Um, hi, yes? I have no self-control and making the faves hurt is practically my job at this point.
> 
> This isn't really canon compliant, but I just wanted to cry onto a page about Tsuna and his Issues (a lack of self-worth, a fear of disappointing people - which becomes a fear of responsibility - depression, apathy, the whole lot.)
> 
> This is especially about Tsuna's guardians and the way they interact. I know Tsuna being the straight man who gets dragged along is supposed to be the running gag, but the story tries to bludgeon you with bonds and friendship without really acknowledging what Tsuna (and Many other characters) have been through, and i feel the way they all connected and became guardians and friends is incredibly superficial, something I feel would hit Tsuna extremely hard, deciding to just push it aside and act as if the friendships Tsuna has made are truly fulfilling. It may fill the hole for a while, but it's really only a duct tape patch job and won't really help solve his issues in the long run, instead it will only exacerbate them and make Tsuna bury them deeper.
> 
> Poor baby, Tsuna just wants love and support. Tsuna just wants to be seen as Tsuna, nothing more, nothing less.
> 
> Anyhoo this is really short and sort of word-vomit-y but I hope you liked it at least a little? This is the first khr fic I’ve finished and posted, and the first of many I will undoubtedly write. (Probably.)
> 
> Well, until next time!
> 
> My Tumblr is [ekourege](https://ekourege.tumblr.com), if you want to see more of me


End file.
